Friends

Writing homework from the first writing class of this term, which I might add I didn't make last Friday, is to write about some aspect of friendship. It can be analytical, of memoir, or a fictional story. I picked up my class notes from teacher Maria on Sunday. Within the notes there's references from the Bible, a poem by Robert Frost, a sonnet by Shakespeare, excerpts from an Emerson essay and quotes from Benjamin Franklin, Norman Douglas, Seneca, Peter Ustinov and Pascal. My Anzac Day post about my late friend Fred Sargent was also there, due to its topical nature, and any of these could be a starting point.

It's easier for me to start with Fred, whom I first met in 1975. I was working for beekeeper/ honey merchant/equipment supplier Norm Redpath. One day he sent me from Melbourne to Boorhaman to pick up a load of honey. I jumped at the chance as it seemed a nice change and an easy days work. I reached Boorahman around lunchtime (actually Fred lived north of Boorahman about 15 minutes but I can't remember the name of the location, there being no town). We loaded the honey, from memory 70 tins, the square kerosene type tins that held 27kg, then Fred invited me in for lunch. It was no frills cold meat and salad. Fred's wife Beryl had already eaten but sat away little, smoked, and drank tea. She wore the thickest glasses I'd ever seen. Conversation flowed easily and I was as hungry for Fred's knowledge as I was for the lunch.

I left shortly after the post lunch cuppa. I already I had two new friends, who'd welcomed me into their lives telling me to come back and visit any time. Later that year Fred lent me a bee site on the Paterson's Curse over the border in NSW. I stayed the night at Fred and Beryl's a couple of times while up there working the bees. I recall at that site, surrounded by paddocks still purple with curse flower, going to the truck for a break and hearing on the radio that Gough Whitlam had been sacked. I laughed. Fred, a staunch Labour man, wasn't happy when I reached his place.

The next year when I moved to Wangaratta to take up the north east Vic. apiary inspector job, Fred was the only beekeeper I knew. He was a comfort and ally in my first couple of years there. He retired soon after and, to my disappointment as it seemed a radical step to leave his home where he loved the quiet isolation, moved to a house on  aquarter acre in Wangaratta on a busy road. He said he always planned to retire as soon as he reached 65, they told him at Repat after the war that the malnutrion he suffered as a POW would likely reduce his lifespan by ten years. He could get a TPI pension and Beryl pressured him to move into Wang. I guess it was a little lonely for Beryl since their daughter moved away after living in a house that Fred built for her and her hubby adjacent to Fred and Beryl's, the idea being the son in law was to take over the bees. He'd decided beekeeping wasn't for him.

Lib and I were married in January1981 and Fred and Beryl attended our wedding. We left Wang some months later but often visited Fred and Beryl when we were in Wang to see Lib's mum. One time, perhaps a year since our previous visit, when I knocked on the door strangers answered, saying they'd recently bought the house, and they didn't know where Fred and Beryl had gone.

Some time passed till I found out Fred had walked out on Beryl. His old place had come up for sale and he wasn't happy in Wang so he bought it. Beryl wouldn't go with him, she moved into flat in the heart of town. They'd had a running battle over Beryl's chain smoking all the time I'd known them. It got worse in town. Fred was a reformed smoker and he hated it. He spent the next ten years growing trees before his death in 1996. Beryl had died earlier, of lung cancer. On Fred's epitaph there's reference to his partner Flossie, whom I never met, but I'm glad he found a companion in his last years.

That all might sound a bit boring, but thinking about Fred, and Beryl, expands my thinking, understanding and compassion. That's what friends do for you. They are the most wonderful thing about life. I'm reaching an age that means I have many friends who have passed away. I have new friends, old friends, friends that live on other continents, friends on holiday in other countries, friends interstate, men, women, even some children. I have neighbours who are friends, also cousins, siblings, mother, wife, kids. It's a privilege to have them as friends. They are in my mind and heart, close to me always. Regardless of distance, infrequent contact, or death, they belong with me and are with me. They give meaning to life.

Our childhood friends and those of our youth, I would say, give us strong bonds and open our hearts. Then, as the pressure and stresses of making money, career building, raising kids, the burdens of responsibility grow, we lose some of it. Friends help us rediscover our hearts. Friends help us understand.*
Hopefully there are many new friends in my future I'm yet to meet.

*"Only if we understand... can we concieve of the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that people who are afraid of living are especially frightened of death."  (Medard Boss)

Anzac Day

I always think about my old friend Fred Sargent come Anzac Day. He was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Singapore and spent 3+ years as a POW in Shangi and on the Burma railway. His brother, a patient in Singapore hospital, was killed in the fire that destroyed the hospital following the bombing raid. Another of his brothers, Albert, a commando on a mission to blow up Japanese ships in Singapore harbour, was captured, sentenced to death, and beheaded about a month before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan early in August 1945.

Some years ago, in a newspaper article dated 7 Nov 1945, replicated in The Weekly Times book 'The Bible of the Bush', released in 1994 in celebration of 125 years of publication, I came across the story of 8 Australians who were beheaded by the Japanese earlier that year. I was moved by this story. Firstly because the Australian soldiers were reportedly "gallant to the end", dying with great bravery in a ceremonial execution respectful of their courage. Secondly, I was aware that one of the men executed was Fred's brother, the newly married Lieutenant Albert 'Blondie' Sargent.

A few years ago I came across a book titled 'Kill the Tiger', subtitled 'The Truth about Operation Rimau', first published in 2002. This book reveals that the 8 Australians and two Britons did not go cheerily to their deaths after sharing cigarettes. They were brutally hacked to death with bungling ineptitude by five guards from Outrim prison and thrown on top of each other into three graves, four in one and three in each of the other two, after five months of cruelty and degradation.

The book states that no one in the Allied forces wanted the full story of Operation Rimau, which went horribly wrong, to be publicly revealed. They all had something to hide. This includes the British Establishment, the Americans, the British Navy and the Australian High Command. It concludes the chapter 'The Final Betrayal' saying the Rimau cover-up, in place for nearly sixty years, can be traced right to the top of the Australian High Command.

It dismays me that history, war time or otherwise, can be distorted, and that for years I had been under an illusion. Fred, who died in 1996 when aged in his mid eighties, probably never knew the truth which is the least he deserved, given his and his family's sacrifice.

Fred spent most of his working life after the war as a commercial beekeeper. He had a great love of trees and birds. In his retirement he planted and tended ten acres of red gums, spotted gums and sheoaks at Boorhamen. I'm pleased that shortly before he died I visited him with Lib and the boys and he proudly showed us around his young mini forest. He was a gentle man and a wonderful friend.

Autumn

I reached for a jacket half an hour ago, the first time for what seems like many months. It's drizzling outside, yellow pokers are flowering in the garden and the dogwood trees that are away from the septic drain have their rich red, orange and yellow colours. They have had enough this season and are happy to disrobe for winter rest. Those close to the drain, with access to plenty of moisture through summer and March are still lush and green and will hold  for a while, till colder temperatures convince them to let go. They are heavy in flower bud, programmed for their October show.

Robbie caught four mice in a trap the other day, there's clothes on the horse in front of the gas heater; it was used on Saturday to help defrost the meat taken from the freezer for the barby; we haven't had that problem for a while. I resist yet, carting wood in and lighting the fire. Once I start it's a daily chore, for up to 150 days, with only the odd warm day's break.

I need a fine warm day to bed the bees down, then forget them, till spring rushes them to new life. Many eucs have a good budset for next season, it could be a biggie, honey wise. It may have been this season, but the good rains sent the trees into prodigious growth and budset for next year, robbing the flowers of the trees' energy.

I'll be busy pruning, renovating, planting into the moist ground, mulching, preparing for the promise of spring and the fresh start. Prospects are good and we are all in reasonable health. What more could I want? A little more time to read, to write, to watch a good movie*, to talk to friends. All that is possible over the next months.

*I've enjoyed movies lately, moreso than I have for years. It's an artform I never really embraced. I watched one the other night called 'Swingblade' starring Billy Bob Thornton, whom I'd never heard of. He wrote it and directed it too. Gee it was good. I'm reading 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris and am enjoying that too. Maybe it's because I'm 58 now (as of last week) that everything seems better and life sweeter. I don't mind ageing at all if this continues. Maybe I speak to soon, I remember the words of a Simon and Garfunkel song, "How terribly strange to be seventy." But several of my septuagenarian friends seem to be amongst the happiest people I know, so I hope I get there to experience it. Could it be that inevitability is easier to accept than uncertainty, and the older you get there's more of the first and less of the latter, and perhaps that allows less anxiety on a daily basis?

I didn't start out to be searching like this, but that's the beauty of writing, thinking and blogging. You wind up looking for a perspective that can help you handle things. It's said, and I don't doubt it, that people often read many different interpretations of the same painting or poem. The longer I live the more wonder I see and feel, in everything.